The CGA recently welcomed two earth observation students from the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena in Germany. Eric Krüger and Stefan Werner are both doing BSc degrees that require three months of vocational experience. Following in the footsteps of previous Jena students, they capitalized on the established relationship between the Earth Observation Departments of Jena and Stellenbosch to partake in a three month internship at the CGA. They quickly adapted to the Stellenbosch environment and with their good work ethic contributed greatly towards the CGA.
Specific tasks they were involved in included:
- Updating earth observation course material
- Geo-referencing and digitizing historical maps
- Learning scripting for basic automated pre-processing
- Classifying irrigated agriculture in South Africa using machine learning
- Editing digital elevation models
- Analysing variables and different software for the atmospheric correction of Sentinel-2 data
- Designing high quality hiking maps
- Finding database solutions for spatially representing advanced cadastral data
They have successfully completed their internship period and hopefully gained valuable experience in the operational use of earth observation and remote sensing. Eric has returned to Jena to complete his BSc degree, while Stefan has embarked on an exploration of a few other African countries. CGA thanks Stefan and Eric for their input and wishes them well with future endeavours.
